Kitty Dukakis obit

Kitty Dukakis, Wife of Former Presidential Nominee Michael Dukakis, Dies at 88

The former first lady of Massachusetts and author of two books was outspoken about mental health and addiction throughout her life

 She was not on the list.

Kitty Dukakis, the author and former first lady of Massachusetts, has died. She was 88.

Kitty, who was married to former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, died with family at her side on Friday, March 21, her son, John Dukakis, told WBUR.

Her cause of death, John, 66, told The Washington Post, was complications from dementia.

Kitty, born Katherine Dickson on Dec. 26, 1936, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was raised in a Jewish family.

After graduating high school in the nearby town of Brookline, she briefly studied at Pennsylvania State University, ultimately dropping out and marrying her first husband, John Chaffetz Sr. During their four-year marriage, the couple moved around and had one son, John Jr.

Upon returning to Cambridge in the wake of her divorce, Kitty was introduced to Michael, who later served three nonconsecutive terms as the Massachusetts governor between 1975 and 1991, by a friend. "I found him very sexually attractive," she recalled to Time magazine in 1987. "People don't think of Michael that way. That's why it's fun to talk about it."

The two hit it off and were married in 1963, the same year Kitty completed her bachelor's degree in education at Lesley College. In addition to raising John Jr., they had two daughters together, Andrea and Kara.

Kitty went on to earn two master's degrees from Boston University, one in broadcast and film and another in social work.

As a social worker, Kitty served on the board of directors for the Refugee Policy Group and Refugees International. President Jimmy Carter appointed her to his commission on the Holocaust, and she became a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, opened in 1993.

In 1990, following bouts of depression during her third term as Massachusetts' first lady and her publicized hospitalization for alcoholism, Kitty released her memoir Now You Know. The book openly discussed her struggles with drinking and mental health, as well as the disappointment from Michael’s landslide defeat in the 1988 presidential race, when he was the Democratic nominee against Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush.

“I was an alcoholic before Michael lost,” she told The Los Angeles Times in an interview after her one-month stay at a recovery center in 1989. But while the campaign loss pushed her over the edge, she clarified, “One event does not make one an alcoholic.”

Kitty co-authored a second book, Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy, in 2006, detailing how ECT was the only treatment that successfully eased her depression. In the latter half of her life, she and Michael became advocates for destigmatizing ECT.

“That’s our goal: not just remission, but return to living a full life,” she told Politico in a 2015 article talking about their wholehearted belief in ECT.

Kitty is survived by her son, husband and other family members.